Meet the new boss . . .

By Megan McArdle

Strategically, the speech was a commonplace effort to reduce resistance
to a political agenda by generating a vague sense of uplifting cohesion
and casting any possible opposition as outmoded, small-spirited, and
immature. Politicians take this tack because it works, and Obama's
really good at it. People liked it. Obama worked the perennial rhetoric
of transformative politics expertly, but if you were expecting
something truly transformative, beyond the transformative fact of a
black president, then you've got to be a bit disappointed.